This was published 7 years ago
Obama's shadow cast off as Trump and Netanyahu share 'very nice' phone call
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis
Washington: US President Donald Trump on Sunday invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House early next month, working quickly to forge close ties with a crucial ally who was often at odds with his predecessor.
On Mr Trump's second full day in office, he and the prime minister discussed by telephone "ways to advance and strengthen the US-Israel special relationship, and security and stability in the Middle East". White House officials said. Mr Trump also expressed an "unprecedented commitment to Israel's security".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: his office expressed shock at the US team's position.Credit: AP
The two also discussed efforts to make peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, officials said. Both leaders described the discussion in friendly terms. Mr Trump told reporters gathered in the East Room as he swore in senior White House officials that the conversation had been "very nice", while Mr Netanyahu said in a statement that it had been "very warm."
Mr Trump did not respond to questions about whether the two men had spoken about moving the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, a campaign promise that has symbolic significance for Israelis and Palestinians. Both regard the holy city as their rightful capital.
A construction site in the Israeli-occupied West Bank settlement of Maale Adumim on Sunday.Credit: AP
But Trump and his inner circle, including David Friedman, the bankruptcy lawyer he has nominated to be his ambassador to Israel, have made it clear they intend to make the move. It is part of an effort to telegraph a stark break with Barack Obama's policies, along with the nuclear deal with Iran and his opposition to Israeli settlement construction.
Israel approved building permits on Sunday for hundreds of homes in three East Jerusalem settlements. The housing projects, on land that the Palestinians seek as part of a future state, had been taken off the Jerusalem municipality's agenda in December at the last minute at the request of Mr Netanyahu, in order to avoid further censure from the Obama administration.
However Mr Netanyahu blocked the initiative of a chief rival, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, who had proposed a law with potentially explosive consequences: the annexation of Maale Adumim, a settlement of 40,000 people just north-east of Jerusalem. Mr Bennett agreed to hold off on any such legislation until Mr Netanyahu meets Mr Trump in February.
"Many matters face us, the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the situation in Syria, the Iranian threat," Mr Netanyahu said in remarks broadcast at the start of his weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday.
US policy has held since 1995 that the embassy should be moved to Jerusalem, but it has yet to be implemented by presidents of either party.Credit: Chris McGrath
Jerusalem is the seat of Israel's government, but the US embassy is in Tel Aviv, the country's commercial centre, on the theory that Jerusalem's fate should be determined only as part of a broader peace agreement between Israelis and the Palestinians. While US policy holds that the embassy should be moved to Jerusalem - in line with a 1995 law enacted to do so - presidents in both parties have waived the measure on national security grounds, concluding that the move would prejudge the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The US has long supported a two-state solution to the conflict, but Mr Friedman has questioned that approach, and Mr Trump has said Israelis should be able to keep building settlements in the West Bank, in defiance of world opinion.
David Friedman, Donald Trump's choice for ambassador to Israel, owns an apartment in Jerusalem.Credit: AP
In the call on Sunday, White House officials said Mr Trump had told Mr Netanyahu "that peace between Israel and the Palestinians can only be negotiated directly between the two parties, and that the United States will work closely with Israel to make progress towards that goal". Trump has said he wants his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was sworn in on Sunday as his senior adviser, to lead that effort.
It is not clear what immediate action Mr Trump will take to move the embassy. Mr Friedman, who owns an apartment in Jerusalem, could live there and hold official meetings at the US consulate in the city or at hotels nearby, allowing the administration to say it had followed through on the pledge to relocate. The President could also refrain from signing the waiver when it expires in June, in effect re-instituting the law that requires the US to build an embassy in Jerusalem.
Either move would most likely be provocative both in the US and around the world, cheering some US Jews and supporters of Israel but raising concerns among others that it would undermine the prospects for peace in the region.
On Sunday, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas met in Jordan with King Abdullah II, and both leaders repeated their staunch opposition to the embassy move.
The men did not release details of any plans for a coordinated reaction, but both have warned of renewed violence if the move happens.
The White House seemed to seek to stifle speculation of any immediate announcement.
"We are at the very beginning stages of even discussing this subject," said Sean Spicer, Mr Trump's spokesman.
Meir Turgeman, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem, said his city had entered a new era, in which American objections to building on territory seized in the 1967 war were in the past.
"Trump is the one who said the minute he is President there will be no disagreements about building in Jerusalem or about moving the embassy to Jerusalem," he told Israeli Radio. "I'm just implementing his vision."
"No matter how they try to explain it, it will send an unmistakable signal that we are validating the Israeli position that the whole of Jerusalem is a wholly owned Israeli enterprise," said Aaron David Miller of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, who has advised Republican and Democratic presidents on the Middle East. "This would shred American credibility and have a chilling effect" on any prospect of a peace effort.
David Makovsky, the director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at pro-Israel think tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the Trump administration should make it clear that any move it makes on the embassy should not be read as a statement about the final resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"They'll be more successful in minimising the risks here if they make the delineation known both privately and publicly, that they're not moving to presuppose the legal status of the Old City and East Jerusalem," Mr Makovsky said. "They need to make clear what this is, and what this is not."
New York Times, Reuters